First-generation ICD graduate Bria Gresham (PhD ’25) researches how health disparities affect childhood cancer rates and outcomes
ICD grad turns passion for child advocacy into a research career focused on health disparities
Bria Gresham (PhD ’25), likes to say she was “raised in a hospital.” Originally from Illinois, Gresham was one of five children raised by a single mother. Her second-oldest brother had a complex medical condition that required 19 surgeries and repeated hospitalizations, and he had a disability that required around-the-clock care. He passed away just shy of his 18th birthday. Gresham’s mother is an LPN, but she did not work in the nursing field while Gresham was growing up. Instead, she cared for Gresham’s brother and her other children full time.
During these difficult years, Gresham was assigned a guardian ad litem for a short period. Gresham’s experience with this court-appointed advocate inspired her early interest in child advocacy law. She also felt drawn to teaching. She knew she wanted to attend college, but because she was the first in her family to do so, her path to a degree and to a career helping children wasn’t immediately clear.
Gresham was admitted to a small liberal arts college in Virginia, but she was forced to withdraw due to a complex family matter after just a semester. She then took online classes from a New York-based college “before online school was really a thing,” she recalls, where she faced personal and financial barriers and again withdrew after one semester. “‘False starts’ are my affectionate term for these experiences,” she says.
Gresham then took on a variety of jobs—cake decorator, floral department manager—and continued working full-time while obtaining her associate’s degree in paralegal studies at Gadsden State Community College in Alabama before transferring to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she declared a criminal justice major.
She worked as a paralegal while taking a full course load and participating in mock trials. Late nights found her Googling questions like “How do you get into law school?” Her day job in personal injury law, however, led Gresham to suspect that law might not be the right fit after all. She started exploring different majors, including psychology.
“The first class I took outside of general psychology was developmental psych, and I absolutely fell in love,” she says. “So many of the things I had been thinking and feeling about growth, development, and family started aligning and making sense.”
Gresham turned again to Google. Her late-night search sessions now included questions like: “What do you do with a degree in psychology?” “What is a PhD?” “How do you get into graduate school?”
As a junior, Gresham joined the psychology honors program and a research lab focused on “contextual violence—community violence, discriminatory experiences, and adversity. I felt that touched my core in a way,” she says. She began applying to PhD programs in her senior year and chose to come to the Institute of Child Development (ICD).
“The community-based mentorship model really drew me to ICD, the ability to integrate my interests across labs and areas,” Gresham explains. Her primary advisor was Associate Professor Canan Karatekin, and Karatekin referred her to Professor Emerita Megan Gunnar when she decided to propose a project on the effects of community violence on cortisol levels to the National Science Foundation. Gresham also completed a three-year training program in Population Studies through the Minnesota Population Center, mentored by School of Public Health Professor Theresa Osypuk, whose research examines neighborhood effects on health. Each of her faculty advisors contributed a different lens on Gresham’s research.
“Canan focuses on adversity and social determinants of health. The physiological piece came from Megan, and the neighborhood piece from Theresa,” Gresham explains. “My research investigated the downstream consequences—poor physical and mental health—of neighborhood conditions, as well as social policy and macro factors that can buffer risks.”
While she was finishing up her dissertation and considering next steps, Gunnar shared with her that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, an academic medical center focused on childhood catastrophic diseases, was seeking researchers. Gresham applied and was offered a position as faculty instructor in the Department of Psychology and Biobehavioral Sciences.
Gresham with son, Dexter, who was born the summer after the second year of her PhD.
The research program that Gresham now leads at St. Jude reflects the organization’s focus on childhood cancer. “There is evidence that residing in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood is associated with disparities in childhood cancer outcomes,” she explains. She notes that these disparities are not just found in survival rates. They are also found in the types of treatment that patients have access to. And they are found in the prevalence of comorbidities as well as in the effects of treatment, including anxiety and depression.
“The care that St. Jude provides is instrumental in increasing survival rates,” Gresham says. “But we are also working to understand the effects of treatment and its long-term outcomes. I am applying my background working on the contextual effects on health to childhood cancer.”
Gresham also appreciates the organizational culture of supporting early-career academics. “St. Jude wants to help folks who are underrepresented in academic settings and programs,” she explains, citing lots of opportunities to continue mentoring students and trainees.
“This truly felt like everything fell into place,” Gresham says of her current role. “I am the sibling of a severely ill and disabled person who developed an interest in child advocacy. Now I go to work and walk through the hospital, and everyone is unified under this mission of improving the lives of children. It feels like a beautiful way to use my background, degree, and expertise.”
Bria Gresham examines a map of geographic variation in cancer and the multidimensional features of neighborhood environments that may explain this variation.